The Best of Hemmings in a free daily newsletter.

Each day, Monday through Friday, our editors will send you our Hemmings "Find of The Day" along with news from the collector car hobby and featured classified ads. Available in both a daily and weekly format.

Posted by Daniel Strohl -
Image courtesy David Turner
Replica cars have become, over the last few decades, something of a mixture between automotive curiosity, automotive battleground, and automotive joke. Cheap unauthorized fiberglass imitations have led many people to dismiss the concept of replicars entirely, but it hasn't always been that way, and not every replicar manufacturer worked out of a fly-by-night operation. Indeed, Glenn Pray, one of the pioneers of the replicar movement has in recent years received a good amount of recogni... Read On>>

Posted by Daniel Strohl -
Jaguar? But it looks more Mediterranean, both inside and out. Like maybe a Maserati or a Pegaso. There's even a hint of Ferrari in those fenders. But indeed, this 1955 Jaguar XK140MC wears a body designed and built by Ghia. As if that weren't enough, the MC suffix means that its dual overhead-camshaft engine runs a C-Type head, boosting its output by 20 horsepower to 210 total. From the seller's description:
Winner of numerous awards. Chassis number S815404 is a custom-bodied Jaguar XK140 MC with all-aluminum fastb...Read On>>

Posted by David Traver Adolphus -
Formula 1 world champ Jenson Button has come up with a new sideline: By buying a sports car, seemingly at any price, he can drive it for a year or so and sell it at auction at a profit. His latest is a real cracker, a 1978 Ferrari 512BB he bought last April at H&H for £82,500 ($127,050, with premium), which will be at Bonhams RAF Museum sale in Hendon on April 11.
Since then, he's enjoyed all of 55 miles of driving, almost far enough to take the car from Buxton to, say, Scunthorpe. According to Bonhams:
Due...Read On>>

Week in Review

Posted by Mike McNessor -
The top sale from Mecum's recent Kansas City auction? A 1965 Corvette Convertible 396/425hp, four-speed with Bloomington Gold Benchmark status that changed hands for $188,000.
The well-preserved Rally Red big-block was one of a total of six Corvettes among the top 10 highest sales reported during the two-day auction, March 11-12. Gross sales from the event, excluding buyer's premium, totaled $6.6 million, with a 64 percent sell-through rate.
The number two top earner was a five-year-old Ford GT that crosse...Read On>>

Posted by Daniel Strohl -
One of the cars that will debut with BMW's recently announced i sub-brand will be a small, smart/iQ-sized urban runabout called the i3. While it will inevitably present a compact, eco-friendly footprint that will likely seat two adults and a midget or two, you can already find most of those attributes in this 1959 BMW Isetta 600 - the "limousine" version of Urkel's car. From the seller's description:
Produced with the intent to be an enlarged Isetta with even more power, the BMW Isetta 600 was the largest of the BM...Read On>>

Posted by Jim O'Clair -
While TA wrote last month about the Vinnylonglegs Vincent crossing the auction block in the Bonhams Stafford auction on April 24, that same auction will also feature a number of vintage cafe racers. Some of these names you may not recognize, but they have a few things in common. All are European-built, with road racing in one of the under-350cc Grand Prix classes in mind, and share the small fairing and racing board (seat) prevalent in Sixties and Seventies road course competition.
* 1957 Bianchi 175 used a singl...Read On>>

Posted by Richard Lentinello -
On Wednesday, March 16, the collector-car community lost one of its most colorful characters, Billy Thompson, of White Post Restorations. Billy was well known not only for the fine restorations that his company produced and the many thousands of brake cylinders that they rebuilt, but for his humor, honesty and willingness to do what it takes to help the old car hobby flourish. He will be sorely missed by all....Read On>>

Posted by Mike Bumbeck -
We know what you're thinking. Another Matador? What on earth did the husband of Gene Tierney and official designer for first lady Jacqueline Kennedy's wardrobe have to do with this mighty 1974 AMC Matador? Everything. Cassini lent a further touch of class to the already elegant Matador. The designer Matador was a pre-emptive strike against the future Bill Blass edition Lincoln LTD, and the rapidly approaching assault of the Ricardo Montalban-endorsed Chrysler Cordoba. We're all for a return of designer-edition cars....Read On>>

Posted by Jim Donnelly -
What's a Currituck? It's the name of a county at the extreme northeastern corner of North Carolina, divided by a sound that separates the mainland and county seat from the northern reaches of the Outer Banks. Its rich, moist soil is ideal for growing truck crops, to use the name we all learned in grade-school geography class.
That's what Trucking As It Used to Be is all about. Travis Morris, a native Currituckian – we learned that appellation from him – has authored an account of hauling North Carolina fruits...Read On>>

Posted by Dave LaChance -
From England comes the unhappy news that Bristol Cars, a maker of handbuilt, high-performance cars for discriminating (and wealthy) buyers for more than 60 years, has gone into bankruptcy. Up for grabs are all of Bristol's assets, including its sole showroom in High Street Kensington, West London; its factory and restoration shop at Filton, just north of Bristol; its spare parts; its trademarks; all of its machinery; a number of used Bristols and the Web domain www.bristolcars.co.uk.
The sale is being handled by ...Read On>>

Posted by Daniel Strohl -
The last 1948 Chrysler Town and Country we selected as a Hemmings Find of the Day drew some scorn because of the Cadillac engine that had been transplanted under its hood. Fear not, then: This 1948 Chrysler Town and Country still has the Chrysler flathead straight-eight powering that elegant wooden body. However, this one is being advertised as a daily driver, which causes us to ponder: Would you drive any Full Classic such as this one on a daily basis? From the seller's description:
1948 Chrysler Town & Countr...Read On>>

Posted by Daniel Strohl -
Drag racing in New England hasn't always been relegated to Epping, New Hampshire. In fact, the region saw plenty of side-by-side action from the 1950s onward on a number of tracks, many of them repurposed airstrips. One of the longest lived of those tracks was the one at Orange, Massachusetts, where drag racing will return this September after a 40-year absence.
As part of the annual Orange Airport Dragstrip Reunion, which until now has only featured a pre-1974 car show, the new drags will take place on a 1/16th-...Read On>>

Posted by Mike McNessor -
Ford's Pinto really wasn't a miserable car to drive, thanks to its responsive rack-and-pinion steering and a gutsy overhead cam engine, but it became the poster car for Detroit’s arrogance after Mother Jones published the story "Pinto Madness," which accused Ford of knowingly selling a car that could explode in a rear-impact accident.
Under pressure, Ford issued a recall and installed protective plastic gas tank shields. The Pinto remained in production until 1980, and more than 3 million were sold, but it ...Read On>>

Posted by Daniel Strohl -
Certainly, no car is universally admired. There will always be somebody out there who will turn his nose up at any car you offer him. That said, there aren't that many collector-car enthusiasts out there who would turn their nose up at a Packard Caribbean, and this particular 1953 Packard Caribbean looks like a beaut. From the seller's description:
Original 327ci straight-eight engine has been restored by Ross Miller, Packard Technician in Parkton, Maryland, as has the manual three-speed transmission. The interior ...Read On>>

Posted by Jim Donnelly -
Let's say you were a twentysomething mullet-head just when Ronald Reagan was getting comfortable in the White House. You therefore have to remember the big kaboom that resulted when Chevrolet unveiled its third-generation Camaro. The aftermarket for body add-ons swelled to the proportions of a Baltic GDP.
So we know a lot of people will be happy to know that Classic Industries has begun reproducing key bits of that Camaro cladding, the first thing to get chewed apart on many IROC-Zs and the like. Front and rear b...Read On>>